Just days before winning the 2025 Cheyenne Frontier Days with a 9.3-second run July 27, Aaron Tsinigine and Jeremy Buhler were roping in Canada under the impression their chance at the Daddy of ‘Em All title was shot.
After turning in a 10.9 in the quarterfinals in Cheyenne earlier that week to tie the reigning World Champs Tyler Wade and Wesley Thorp for fourth, Tsinigine and Buhler assumed the tiebreaker would go to the team with the faster first-round time—just like it had in previous years. They headed north, and Friday, just as they were starting a long day of jackpotting and rodeoing in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Tsinigine got the call they had indeed advanced to the Semifinals in Cheyenne.
“After we made it back after that round right there to Sunday, we didn’t draw very good on the last one, but the whole time in the back of my mind, I kept thinking, I think this is supposed to be,” Tsinigine, the 2015 PRCA world champion header, said. “They just kept giving us another one, kept giving us another one. We finally took advantage of it the last day.”
Tsinigine and Buhler pocketed a total $13,350 a man when the curtain closed on Cheyenne, pushing them to $71,650.65 and $56,810 in the PRCA world standings, respectively, and making for their first Cheyenne Frontier Days titles. While 2016 World Champion Buhler has a war chest full of major rodeo wins, including the Reno Rodeo earlier this summer with Tsinigine, this one ranks at the top of his list.
“Honestly, for me, I’ve won Pendleton, Salinas, Houston,” Buhler, 37, said. “To me, Cheyenne was one of the ones that was still sitting there for me. But I’d never even made a short round at Cheyenne, so I honestly didn’t know if I’d ever get it.”
Cheyenne Rollercoaster
Tsinigine and Buhler’s Cheyenne rollercoaster kicked off with a 9.3 in the qualifier July 7, to punch their tickets to the performances. After riding the waves of the quarterfinals tie-breaker and running on little sleep and adrenaline, they legged their steer in the semifinals for a 15.6—but it was still enough to punch their ticket to Sunday. But the complications didn’t end there.
“That morning I kept telling myself I have to stay away from two steers, because they brought back the steers that everybody placed on,” Tsinigine explained. “And I said, ‘I need to stay away from Luke Brown’s steer, and I need to stay away from Bubba Buckaloo’s steer. I don’t care what we get, but I cannot have one of those steers.’ And we went to lunch and I told Buhler the same thing. I don’t care what we get, we just can’t get one of those steers. And I’m thinking the whole time, I know we’re second out, so I’m going to get the pick from 11 steers. There’s no way I’m going to get one of those. I go to check the draw, and the first team out has Bubba Buckaloo’s, and I’m second and I have Luke Brown’s steer.”
Knowing he was supposed to be strong and off to the right, Tsinigine asked Buhler to pick him up, and he ended up being better than expected.
“I don’t think I made him better, but the steer ran a real good pattern,” Buhler said. “Aaron was like, ‘Try to sneak up on him; if he can see you when I’m getting there, just kind of try to keep him in the middle.’ But the other thing he said is like, well the first guy that hazed him sent him left pretty hard, which you don’t want that here. But, long story short, the steer ran a real good pattern, and his speed was pretty good. I don’t think he was as fast as we thought he was going to be. He ended up just being a pretty true, pretty good steer, I thought.”
Their 9.3-second run sealed the deal, but with the clean-slate nature of the Daddy of ’Em All, nothing was certain.
“A rodeo like that, you never know,” Buhler admitted. “Especially when it’s sudden death. You never know when someone’s going to get wild.”
Tsinigine and Buhler’s Cheyenne horsepower
Tsinigine started Cheyenne on his bay gelding in the qualifying round and took RH Sauced N Dandy to the long score of the California Rodeo Salinas. Being back-to-back in the Salinas short round and Cheyenne quarter finals, Tsinigine knew he couldn’t get the 10-year-old gray gelding to the Cowboy State, despite knowing in his gut he needed to. But when they punched their tickets to the Semifinals, nothing could stop him from following his intuition.
“We flew over here and I rode the bay horse, and the whole time I’m wishing, man, I wish I had that gray over here,” Tsinigine admitted. “So when we found out they were giving us another steer over here, we were in Canada, and I was like, man, I got to drive; I’ve got to take that gray horse back. It was 14 hours, but I was like, they’re giving me another chance at a steer, I’ve got to ride the best horse I think I can win on.”
Tsinigine got RH Sauced N Dandy from Chad and Paige Turner roughly two weeks before the Reno Rodeo after keeping a close eye on him the previous three years. Still a touch green, Tsinigine was hesitant at first to crack him out on the rodeo trail, but knowing the Turners prepared him with all the necessary tools gave him the confidence to trust his gut.
“When it came time to go to those rodeos, I was still kind of unsure because the last thing I wanted to do was to blow a horse up over there or put too much pressure on him,” Tsinigine said. “But I got to thinking and I was like, last year and the year before, I was thinking I wish I had that horse there—I knew I could do good on him. So, I’m like, I’m going to go with my gut feeling; that’s what I thought then, so that’s what I’m going to do now. That horse is pretty fast, and in the 45 days I’ve had him, I just kind of knew I had to ride him.”
Buhler wasn’t riding his signature gelding Hoss, but he had another bruiser of a heel horse with him in Cheyenne. Buhler bought “Splinter,” a 9-year-old registered as Pepcid Blue Switch by Jamie and Josh Harden’s Pepcid Olena, as a 3-year-old and showed him along the way to adding him to his rodeo arsenal.
“He’s always been a horse with a lot of size, and like a big, uphill, good-sized horse,” Buhler said. “I like him. Hoss got an abscess after the Fourth (of July), so I kicked him out and it was the first time I’d rode that horse in a couple years. He got hurt two years ago, so I just gave him a bunch of time off, kicked him out in a snowbank for a winter—he was running a wild. So, he’s come back now, and he’s sound and he’s good.”
2025 Resurgence
Year after year, Tsinigine remains a familiar face in ProRodeo, but he’s been relatively quiet over the last three years as his family has been steadily growing Native Land Insurance Services—a venture that’s required more of his time and attention. Originally, Tsinigine planned for 2026 to be the year he jumped back into rodeo full swing, but fate had other ideas.
“I was really planning on next year trying to focus more on rodeo and be back in it, but it just so happens I’m getting lucky and winning these big rodeos,” Tsinigine said. “And now I’ve probably got to enter a little bit more and pay attention to that. They’re doing a good job with the kids and building that company, so I can step away a little bit and kind pay attention to the rodeo side of things, now that I also got my horsepower built up.”
Tsinigine will head next to some rodeos in Idaho, but first, he’s spending a few days home in Tuba City, Arizona, for a youth basketball clinic.
“We wanted to reinvest in the youth, so we had a roping school with Jake (Barnes) and Clay (O’Brien Cooper) and all them in June, so now this is the basketball part of it,” Tsinigine explained. “Because on the reservations everywhere across the country, basketball is the No. 1 sport, and then rodeo is No. 2.”
As for Buhler, he’ll be switching gears as the rope horse futurity season is soon to pick back up heading into the fall.
